Examining speech acoustic to understand bilingual children’s speech productions in Jamaica

What is it about?

This study examined the speech sound production of bilingual preschoolers who speak Jamaican Creole (JC) and English by analysing speech acoustic. A standard analysis approach and a culturally responsive analysis approach were compared. Children's speech productions were compared to adult models from the same linguistic community in the culturally responsive analysis. Acoustic (voice onset time, whole-word duration, and vowel duration) and perceptual (percentage of consonant correct–revised and response frequencies) measures were made. The culturally responsive analysis showed more variation in children's speech and is a more valid method of examining bilingual children's speech production.

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Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

Why is it important?

When analyses and expectations based on monolingual children are used with bilingual children, the bilingual children may be incorrectly classified as being disordered. Culturally responsive analysis methods can remove this bias and lead to more accurate diagnosis of typical or disordered speech production for bilingual children.